Jean Dieudonné

Jean -Alexandre -Eugène Dieudonné ( born July 1, 1906 in Lille, † November 29, 1992 ) was a French mathematician. He provided valuable contributions in the fields of abstract algebra and functional analysis. In addition, he was an important founding member of the Bourbaki group.

Life

Dieudonné studied and graduated from 1924 to 1931 at the École supérieure normal at Paul Montel, interrupted by stays at the universities of Princeton and Berlin and the ETH Zurich. 1932-1933 he was a professor in Bordeaux, Rennes 1933-1937, 1937-1952 in Nancy, with visiting professorships at Strasbourg and São Paulo ( Brazil). In 1952 he went to the USA where he taught first at the University of Michigan in Detroit. From 1953 to 1959 he was professor of mathematics at Northwestern University in Evanston (Illinois ) near Chicago. 1959 Dieudonné returned back to Paris and was until 1964 at the IHES. Since 1964 he has held a chair in Nice.

In 1934 he founded, together with other mathematicians, the Bourbaki group. He was there one of the two leaders. Meanwhile, there is proof that most of the texts that were published under the pseudonym Bourbaki, come in their final version of Dieudonné. He also often wrote the initial version of ( Dieudonné 's Monster called ), then the numerous revisions went through ( Bourbaki had each member of veto). Dieudonné was also a strong advocate of a complete renovation of mathematics education ( New Math ), for which he spent the slogan Down with Euclid! Death to triangles! . First, this is no case of any publicly happened to an international conference in the Abbaye de Royaumont in Asnières -sur -Oise in November / December 1959. Bourbaki in the group, however, was with Dieudonne's views agree ( which also officially retired in 1956 on reaching the 50th birthday of Bourbaki was ).

But his talent for the preparation of textbooks and the great synopsis was also reflected in the monumental Éléments de géometrie algébrique, which he co-authored with Alexander Grothendieck in the 1960s, and the foundations for the further development of theory in the Séminaires de géometrie algébrique (SGA ) of the Grothendieck school formed. In his short two-volume Cours de géometrie algébrique he is a shorter demolition, where he also received detailed in the first volume on the history of this area.

Other fields were such as group theory, Lie groups, Functional Analysis (theory of topological vector spaces, spectral theory ), topology ( 1944, he introduced the concept of the paracompact space a ).

But he is known primarily for his Éléments d'Analyse who deal in multiple volumes, the whole analysis to differential geometry, Lie groups and spectral theory, but turn to advanced. He also wrote textbooks for calculus and linear algebra / geometry for beginners.

1944 Dieudonné was awarded a prize of the Académie des sciences in 1968 and its Member. In 1971 he received the Leroy P. Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society. In 1954 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam (Le calcul différentiel dans les corps de caractéristique p > 0).

Dieudonné was also an excellent pianist. He also went to concerts mostly with the score, which he moaned when the musicians forgot a note. His interest in mathematics history manifested itself in several books, including in the mathematics historical digressions of the Bourbaki books (1994 separately published as Bourbaki's Eléments of the history of mathematics ). He wrote, inter alia, Articles Henri Poincaré and Hermann Weyl in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. In addition, he edited the works of Camille Jordan.

Writings

• La géométrie of groupes Classiques, Springer 1955 3.Aufl.1973
• Introduction to the theory of formal groups, Dekker 1973
• Principles of modern analysis, 9 vols, Vieweg Verlag (English Foundations of Modern Analysis, 1960, French element analysis d )
• Calcul infinitesimal, Hermann 1968
• Algèbre linéaire et géométrie élémentaire, Hermann 1964, and Engl. Linear algebra and geometry 1969
• With Grothendieck Éléments de algébrique geometry, several vols, 1960
• Cours de géometrie algébrique, 2 vols, 1974 ( in 1.Band historical overview )
• Historical development of algebraic geometry, American Mathematical Monthly in 1972, No. 10
• A history of algebraic and differential topology 1900-1960, Birkhäuser Verlag 1988
• History of functional analysis, North -Holland 1981
• Une histoire de la brève topology, in Jean -Paul Pier ed Development of Mathematics 1900-1950, Birkhäuser 1994, pp. 35-150
• L' école francaise du mathématique 20.siècle, in J.- ed P.Pier Development of Mathematics 1950-2000, Birkhäuser 2000
• As editor and co-author of: History of Mathematics 1700-1900 - an outline, Vieweg, 1985 ( online at archive.org ), French Original: abrégé d' Histoire des Mathématiques: 1700-1900, Hermann 1978
• Mathematics - the music of reason, Springer 1992
• Pour l' honneur de l' esprit humain: les Mathématiques aujourd'hui, Hachette 1987
• A panorama of pure mathematics - as seen by Nicolas Bourbaki, Academic Press, 1982 ( original French Gauthier -Villars, 1977)